


Dance to This

by eniaenia



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-famous Ziyi, Alternate Universe - Pre-debut Xukun, M/M, Paris - Freeform, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 09:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eniaenia/pseuds/eniaenia
Summary: We can just, we can just, dance to this.A night in Paris AU.





	Dance to This

He knew this was a bad idea. 

An hour and thirty three, no, thirty four minutes ago, Xukun was staring at himself in the steamed up mirror of his hotel. The clock on his phone blinked 23:11. The marble next to the sink was setting off a slow chill up his fingertips, making him shiver. The shower had been scorching, as usual, and did wonders in melting at least a little bit of the ice he’d been feeling underneath his skin for the last two weeks. It may have even patched up some of his bones; bones that groaned each night under the weight of every preceding set of 14 hours. The punch drunk bags under his eyes were hopeless. After all, this wasn’t a last ten days’ kind of a problem. More two and some years. 

Alarm. 

Knocks on his door. 

Mask.

Hat.

Car.

Water.

Studio.

Lights.

Sweat.

Mirrors.

Corrections.

More corrections.

And again.

Mask.

Hat.

Then car. 

Then hotel. 

Then…

The chance to work with Clement was a miracle Xukun still wasn’t sure he deserved. 

The choreographer was overbooked by everyone’s standards. He was also evidently underwhelmed by anyone’s bullshit, especially the industry’s. 

Xukun’s label had worked for months on getting a call in his diary, after Xukun found his videos online in the middle of another sleep-light night, hiding in the corner of the Beijing studio at 2 am. The video was shot in what looked like an old pool somewhere in Paris. It was the choreographer and five other friends, including two girls. The camera work was definitely not pretty. The lighting was awful. They weren’t hitting every step clean. Xukun felt himself squirm, imagining what his teacher would say. The choreo though seemed fused with each beat – like vines wrapping themselves around each shift and contour, caressing, sparking anew. And, more than anything, Xukun saw the lightness. 

They danced, and made him remember the glimmer in his bones. Before they got brittle, before the counts, before the pinch. Before. 

The video ended with booming laughs and wide grins filling up the camera’s lens, a collective hug, careless winks, a freeze-frame nod. 

Joy. 

Nine months later, Xukun was hunched in his business class seat en route to Charles de Gaulle, his blood still vibrating in tune with screams that followed his rushed arrival at the airport. The crowd was again bigger than the radio event last week. Ming had hovered over him, one arm out, barking orders to the airport staff circling them. They had been briefed, extensively, exhaustingly. Ming still found them sorely lacking. Xukun watched him across the aisle, cracking his knuckles in a slow, methodical pattern. The white businesswoman sitting next to him glanced across every so often with slight alarm in her eyes, then promptly looked away. Xukun could barely see her beyond Ming’s hulking 6 foot 5 shoulders. 

The label sent contracts offering extensive sums (after Xukun found the video, they checked Clement out through their channels and found he’d been working, purposefully underground, with major Western artists. Even they struggled to get him to commit). Clement sent the contracts back. The label forwarded letters from partner labels, explaining the importance of Xukun’s forthcoming debut, and shamelessly plugging the possible returns from Clement accepting this commission, given the size of the Chinese market. Still no. In a fit of desperation, Xukun sent an awkward email in French (thank fuck for the internet) to the private email address his manager procured after much hassling. He attached an old video of him dancing, from around the time the label picked him up. He was fresh faced and sported a major zit on his forehead, but it was Chris Brown and Xukun had loved him then. He thought maybe it showed. Maybe the love showed.

He spent a jittery week checking his email at every break. The silence echoed. 

Then:

Xukun,

Merci. D’accord.

C.

Xukun checked the French online dictionary four times before running to his managers and begging them to re-send the contract. Within a week, it was done. Two weeks working with Clement and his dancers to prepare for his debut. Three original choreographies. The chance to learn through osmosis, repetition, correction. In Paris. 

Shit. 

For the first time in long months, Xukun’s debut seemed weightless. A shy flicker, not a bottomless roar. 

Until he got off that plane. Stepped into the industrial studio in the 11th arrondissement. Found himself on the other side of that camera lens. 

No abandoned pools in Parisian suburbs for him. Only Clement. Six other dancers. Hard, worn out parquet floors. Relentless screeches of rubber. Drenched shirts. Parched throats. Ming’s heavy gaze while inside, and heavier protective hand while out. 

The weight at the pit of his stomach, pulling away.

Clement was professional and friendly – the latter to others more than to him. Xukun frantically worked to learn basic French in those weeks leading up to the trip. He tried it on the dancers that first day, who smiled and answered back (slowly). Clement’s English was good though, his “again” flawless. It ended up being all Xukun heard. 

The only French was spoken when Clement shouted for a break and the dancers dropped to the floor with dramatic sighs. Their energy was insatiable. Soon a chatter of words rang out, followed by gaggles of laughs, arches of teasing shouts shooting across the studio. It was all too fast for Xukun to follow. So he withdrew himself to a corner, to Ming and his coconut water. This silence was familiar. 

After it all, he was drained. He was learning, but he was drained. And it showed.

Fast forward to one hour thirty one minutes ago and the buzzing on his phone. Clement’s name. A steady “Xukun”, followed by more words at once than Xukun had heard from him in one go for ten days. 

“A few of us are going out Xukun, and you are coming with us. When can you be ready?”

As Xukun tried to politely protest, citing the eight hours spent in the studio that day, there was a pause. Then: “When was the last time you were that kid in the video you sent me?”. And Xukun… he had no answer. 

So here he was. Black leather trousers stretched across his legs. Midnight blue silk shirt (which Marie, one of the dancers, promptly unbuttoned the first three buttons on when she saw him, then hooted and winked). Black choker. Eyeliner. BB cream. Hair spray. Lenses.

Black mask covering the bottom half of his face. 

Yeah, Ming was not happy about this development. Xukun had stayed low-key while in Paris, with only a few photos of him entering and exiting his hotel appearing on Weibo. His label was happy – pre-debut interest was good, and his had been better than they all hoped. Ming was happy. He was focusing on what mattered.

Going out with four twenty-something French people to some underground club in the 10th arrondissement past midnight on a Thursday was not a recipe for Ming’s happiness though. Xukun didn’t even want to imagine what the label would think if they knew.

It took Xukun begging for half an hour, stressing loss of face if he ignored his teacher’s order (it was an order, Xukun wasn’t stupid) for Ming to finally relent. Even then, Xukun could still feel him as they walked down Rue Oberkampf away from the studio, a near solid wall of disapproval at their backs. Clement seemed entirely indifferent, joking with Arthur and Claire, his blue eyes sparkling. Marie looped her arm around his, and smiled, listening in. The circle expanded.

On that chilly October evening, the residents of Paris looked indifferent too. A couple glanced over, eyes widening slightly when they noticed the massive Chinese man standing motionless next to a rowdy group draped in the Parisian uniform of black velvet, silk and lace. Xukun noticed some take in his black mask as well – he knew it was an oddity in Europe to wear one. But within seconds, their gazes returned to their phones, books, conversations, others in the carriage. The nightly anonymity of the Paris metro. Xukun had heard and read of this easier tolerance. It was still disorienting to experience it in person: the freedom of not being seen, not being noticed. Not really in any way that dissected and bit. 

Clement looked over at him and smiled. Xukun eyes crinkled back. 

Within minutes, they were at Chateau d’Eau. Marie led them out the half-wet steps peppered with McDonalds wrappers and cigarette fags, then right into chaos. 

Sidewalk full of dark skinned men in high tops, standing outside of shop after packed shop drenched in cheap industrial lights: African hairdressers, Chinese nail salons, faint concerts behind dark doors, rundown spaces featuring pieces that were either art or old jeans. Then left into sidewalk bistros serving picon biere and 2 euro glasses of wine, shwarma and falafel restaurants, boulangeries. Revving scooters and weaving Velibs fighting honking cars and laughing people for ownership of the streets. Young people with tussled hair, Veja trainers, big earrings, scarfs, black overflowing coats, spilling out of everywhere: a hidden cocktail bar, a pizza place, a burger place, fancy restaurants moored like a mirage in the midst of an unexpectedly abundant desert. The mess of Paris all in one. 

Ming’s eyes at his back burned.

Then right into another wall of unruly bodies on stone pavements, Marie’s teeth flashing at him, grin wide, hands grabbing, tugging, being tugged. A human chain against a human sea. Then out, and left into a small side street – human free, other than a few people his age leaning against a wall, a cigarette of sorts travelling on a steady loop between them. 

The faint buzzing of something as they get closer. A large glass entrance painted black. Unassuming. Arthur’s wink as he holds the door for him. Clement’s nod. 

Another door. And another. Then noise. Bass. Smoke. Movement. 

In front of him are hundreds upon hundreds. Flooded in fluorescent lights against cavern walls. 

Flashing wet. Flashing warm. 

Red lips. Bare arms. 

The entire place vibrating in counts of three: free, free, free. 

His hand is taken again, this time Claire. Another pull, down a set of stairs, then back up. A man sees Clement and shouts across at him with a wave. Lifts the rope. Takes their coats. Walks them to a table. 

Champagne is brought. Xukun feels it bubble down his throat. Ming’s look gets heavier. 

After a glass and a half, Xukun decides not to care.

The chatter around him feels welcoming. The laughter seems to include him too. The pinch in his stomach loosens a bit.

Marie and Arthur get up. Hands are offered. His reaches out to meet them. Xukun has just enough time to look to Ming and yell at him to stay there, he’ll be fine, before he is pulled downstairs. 

Clement catches him at the edge of the teeming mass. Looks him in the eyes. 

“Phones are blocked here. No one knows you. There is no one watching. Judging. You should take advantage of it.” 

Xukun stares. The words are still ringing in his ears. Their implication.

Then Clement grins. “Just dance, Xukun.” Pushes him in. Leaps in behind him.

Claire taps him on the shoulder with a smile. Then Arthur. Marie winks. 

They are already moving with a beat. Xukun sees Clement shout out to the others, and throw his hands in the air. Xukun feels himself grin, the corners of his lips moving against the mask. 

Clement closes his eyes, blue joining the black. All around him is rhythm – fluid, jumpy, twitchy, wavy. Some in tune. Many not. Brushing up against him. Boxing him in. Insisting.

Xukun hesitates for a moment. Breathes in.

That pinch loosens a bit more.

His body twists into a rhythm of his own. 

He can feel his skin buzzing, the low bass seeping in to ricochet between his bones, its heavy chimes spurring him on. 

His eyes close. 

The staccato beat spirals and Xukun feels himself spiral up too. He moves. Times passes. 

Suddenly, the cymbals crash, and an 80s procession of synthesizers drops in, the first notes setting off screams and hoots of laughter across the room, echoing against each other. Clement shouts across a “Hell yeah!” from his left and grins at Xukun, light pulsing purple and orange all around him. A collective frenzy builds.

Then, just before the next beat, a beat that promised something: silence. One, two, three. 

The mass roars on a precipice.

Then: baited breaths.

Screams, more wide smiles everywhere.

Then: the drop. 

“Voyage, voyage!”

Marie screams into his ear to the right, a riling grin on her face, a hand gripping his arm, hair flying everywhere. Dozens around him are jumping up and down in rhythms of their own. 

Xukun has never heard it, barely understands every fourth word.

Still, when the next drop comes, he’s there. “Voyage, voyage!”, his throat loosening around each vowel, arms in the air, hip bumping into Arthur, who catches him and laughs back. Laughs again. Xukun laughs too, in sync with the melody.

The mass pulses, and he does too. Traveling together with nowhere to go. Easy as light.

His eyes flutter closed again. He feels weightless. 

The beat continues, twists, grows, breaks. Xukun follows.

The music switches into electronic pop, the kind Xukun used to have as background to his pretend sessions of afternoon studying as a teenager in California. Breezy. Foreign. Familiar. He feels himself relax into it.

The mass shifts around him, their sweat and perfumes and cigarettes filling his senses. Until something different breaks through. Pepper. Spice. 

Xukun feels a heat behind him. A gentle hand barely touching his right hip, announcing itself. A warm breath at his right ear.

“Hello.”

Xukun’s brain takes a second to recognise Mandarin, then tenses. He turns around. 

Dark eyes the contours of almonds and depths of endless galaxies are the first thing he notices. Followed by a chin to cut through glass and stone, a long neck. Full lips that glisten at the centre. Undercut, hair tied back. Huh.

Collarbones peeking out of a white shirt. Shoulders stretching out for miles. Legs stretching out for longer. Towering. Making him feel small. Safe.

A hesitant smile flashing a wide row of pearly teeth. Reassuring. He takes a step toward Xukun, reaches back toward his right ear. Pepper again.

“I saw you dance. I mean, of course, everyone is dancing, but I saw you. I noticed you. I thought maybe…”

Xukun’s head is still sticky like dark honey. The stranger’s gravelly voice soothes. 

Clement catches his eye, eyebrow up. Xukun nods back. Clement grins and shouts across “Dance!”.

Dance. 

Xukun looks back up at the stranger, who waits next to him, a small smile still there. 

“I’m Ziyi” brushes against his ear. Xukun feels himself shudder. 

Fuck it. 

He grabs the stranger’s arm and sets it back to his right hip. Turns around. Moves.

The heat behind him moves as well. His breath slides across the back of Xukun’s neck, fanning the sweat running across his back. Flaming it up to burn, burn, burn. 

Xukun shivers. The grip on his right hip tightens. Ziyi steps in, flush against Xukun’s back. The beat goes on. 

A whispered breath of “Is this ok?” across his left ear. The barest touch of lips. The heat spikes.

And Xukun, for once, refuses to think. To plan.

They move. And move. And move.

Xukun’s limbs are no longer his own.

Just as he’s about to get lost again, there’s a tug against his side, twisting him around. Xukun opens his eyes. Looks into a flushed face. Drops of sweat traveling down clavicles, hair messed up from the heat. 

The air pulses red. 

The stranger’s – Ziyi’s – pupils dilate. Travel down Xukun’s own shirt, wet silk clinging to each ridge. A tongue shoots out to wet plump lips. The amber fire in those eyes burns brighter.

Xukun’s dick stirs against the leather. 

Then, a dirty bass blasts in like a foghorn, setting off another frenzy. The mass around them closes in. Ziyi pulls him in too, long fingers blooming across Xukun’s lower back. His face drops to Xukun’s neck, breathes in. 

Xukun’s breath stutters.

The whisper is back. 

“Ok?”

Xukun’s hips twitch, all on their own. Brush against. 

Oh. 

Oh, oh, oh.

An exhale against his scorched skin, then cool distance. A big hand closing in around his. Eyes that check in with a question and accept an answer. A tug to make them move. Away from the bodies. Away.

Xukun’s blood sings, and his stomach flutters, and he follows.

The world around them is painted pink, and white, and gold. He flashes yellow alongside it.

Until it’s dark. Ziyi pulls him into a corner and steps in against him. A thumb travels up slowly until it reaches his cheek. Brushes once, twice, eyes tracing as it moves. Ziyi’s head leans in, flooding Xukun’s senses. He closes his eyes.

Instead of trapped, Xukun feels like his floating.

They breathe the same smoky air. The bass travels through the walls and through them both.

Xukun lets himself watch. Lets himself feel the soft hair on his forehead, the long eyelashes that pulse. His thumb brushes against Ziyi’s wrist. His other hand travels up to Ziyi’s waist, flickers against the soft skin. Ziyi’s soft moan overpowers the music in Xukun’s ears.

“Fuck.”

The exhale smells of peppermint and promise.

Ziyi’s eyes open and flood.

“Jesus, you're so beautiful. Fuck.”

Xukun’s pulse spikes. His heart races. His eyes close.

There’s Ziyi, and music, and nothing else.

He feels Ziyi’s nose brush gently across his, then a pregnant pause. Xukun knows what comes next.

Only it doesn’t.

Instead, Marie is on his right, a light tug on his arm before a rushed apology.

“Xukun sorry, Ming is looking for you. We said you went to the bathroom, but he couldn’t find you and we couldn’t stall him any longer. Maybe you need to not have him find you here? We should go, no?”

Ziyi’s skin is still everywhere on Xukun’s skin, even where it isn’t. It makes him slow. It makes him want.

It makes him take an extra five seconds to process. Before he realises what Marie is saying. Before he twists back. Looks up. Sees the question.

Knows the answer is no longer the same.

Looks over Ziyi’s shoulder and spots Ming looking around some two dozen metres away. 

Sees what’s coming.

Has just enough time to lightly drag his lips across Ziyi’s cheek toward his ear and whisper a low “Thank you, Ziyi”. 

Has just enough time for one last look, to feel the pull between them sizzling, filling up his nostrils, seeping in.

Has just enough time to sense the heat, to remember the pepper and the spice.

Has just enough time to send back a mad grin, one he hopes says it all. 

Has just enough time to see a twitch of Ziyi’s lips, a tug on the corners of those endless eyes, his beauty pulsing blue.

And then the mass swallows, and he’s gone.

//

“Xukun, hurry up!”

The backstage of the new year’s TV show is lunacy incarnate. Xukun’s debut months before may have exploded into a cosmic event even his hopeful label did not imagine. It still didn’t mean he wasn’t being pulled and prodded and pushed carelessly with the rest of them, in a space of several hundred metres housing hundreds more. Add cameras, wires, microphones, signs, lights and the yelling and voila: lunacy materialised.

Paris felt another planet away. 

Clement’s choreography for the debut was a hit, much like the song itself. The b-side was a different kind of a smash – slow, dirty, provocative, previously unseen. The performance video for it, featuring Arthur, Marie and Claire, had gone viral. Clement had emailed his congrats.

His favourite though remained the third choreo: the one they did in the studio during those last three days following their night out. When all of them buzzed with a different kind of energy. When their feet felt free and their steps bright. Xukun re-watched their practice tapes almost every night after he got back to Beijing, a therapy of sorts against the unrelenting pressure of pre-debut. It reminded him of joy. Of Ziyi.

Ming was pissed that night. Told him off for twenty minutes after they got back to the hotel. The only thing that saved Xukun was that if word got out Ming had let him leave the hotel, his job would be gone too. So Ming kept quiet, and Xukun did as well. 

Which didn’t mean his dreams followed the script too. Every night, he dreamt of clavicles. Of heat. Of gentle fingers and smooth skin and hot lips. Of what could have been.

It buzzed under his skin day in and day out, keeping the fire going. 

It made it all easier. 

Especially surviving mad days like today, where he was always late and almost never good enough. 

“Xukun!”

His manager’s panicked voice rang out. He needed to move. Make up took longer than expected. He was on in four minutes. 

Just as he stepped out of the makeshift prep area, Xukun felt himself tumble.

A strong hand at his hip. A solid shoulder blasting out heat. Pepper. Spice.

Xukun’s eyes fluttered closed. Behind them, he saw pulsing lights. Beauty painted blue.

For one heartbeat, he let himself hope. Made himself dismiss. Steeled himself to be disappointed. 

Then: open.

Full lips half way through a stuttered apology. 

Then: blinking.

Almond eyes widening in recognition.

Then: a twist deep within.

Long fingers gripping his waist a tiny bit tighter. A small, hesitant step in. That heat.

Then: a flicker released into a blaze.

“You.”

“You.”

Slow grin mirroring slow grin.

Warmth sparks warmth.

Blue meets yellow.

Around them, the shapeless mass continues regardless. 

In the middle, their smiles pulse green.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Troye Sivan's Dance to This. 
> 
> I wanted this to be a shorter fic. But maybe there is a sequel here too. Do let me know if you'd be interested to read!


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